From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Amend
It, Don't End It?
The Harriet Miers saga took a comic turn yesterday with the release of her written
testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The supplemental material included
a Texans United for Life questionnaire she filled out in 1989, while running
for Dallas City Council, on which, as Reuters, reports, she answered "yes"
to the question: "If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution
that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death
of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature?"
But the White House insisted that this did not mean she'd be a reliable vote against Roe v. Wade:
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said such a stand did not mean she would rule against abortion law on the high court.
"A candidate taking a political position in the course of a campaign is different from the role of a judge making a ruling in the judicial process," Perino said. "Harriet Miers has a conservative judicial philosophy, and as a Supreme Court justice she will strictly interpret the Constitution, rule based on the facts, and not legislate from the bench."
It is true that many people are pro-abortion but anti-Roe--that is, they oppose both the criminalization of abortion and the creation of an imaginary constitutional right to abortion. The opposite position, however, seems far less tenable. Most people who support Roe do so on policy grounds; that is, they like the outcome and are indifferent to the Constitution. The only way we can see to reconcile support for Roe with support for the Human Life Amendment is if one has a highly expansive view of the Supreme Court's role--believing that it has near-dictatorial power over social policy, capable of being overridden only by the very difficult process of amending the Constitution.
We aren't saying this is Miers's view; indeed, we'd be surprised if she's thought the question through in any depth. Which of course is the main reason we have been critical of her nomination.
In any case, this latest revelation will make it hard for liberal Democrats--including all eight on the Judiciary Committee--to support Miers, which means that if the conservative revolt over the nomination translates into any significant Republican opposition, she will not make it to the high court.
Homer
Nods
We were thinking of Harry Blackmun yesterday when we said that William Rehnquist
was President Nixon's third choice for the Supreme Court. It was Blackmun whom
the Senate confirmed in 1970, after rejecting Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold
Carswell. The following year, as The
Washington Monthly noted in 2001, Nixon was "on the verge of announcing
California Judge Mildred Lillie and Arkansas attorney Herschel Friday as his
choices" to replace Hugo Black and John Harlan before picking Lewis Powell
and Rehnquist instead.
Why
'Energy Independence' Is Poppycock
Several readers wrote to ask why, in an item yesterday, we dismissed George
Packer's call for "energy independence" as an "utterly pointless
dispute." Packer, who was urging a new Democratic agenda, didn't really
explain what he meant by "energy independence," but our understanding
of the liberal conception of it is as follows:
- The government should establish policies aimed at reducing the use of oil
(fuel-economy standards, higher gasoline taxes, incentives or coercive measures
to encourage use of public transit, etc.).
- This in turn would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, helping to starve the Arabs and thus reduce terrorism.
For the sake of argument, let's take the first part of this argument--that the government could reduce oil consumption, effectively a reduction in demand--as a given. Basic economics tells us that a reduction in the demand for a commodity will lower the price.
What happens when the price of oil goes down? High-cost oil production becomes uneconomical, which means that low-cost producers end up accounting for a greater share of the market. The lowest-cost producer of all is our friends the Saudis. Thus "energy independence," if effective at all, would actually make America more dependent on "foreign" (Arab) oil.
Dream
On
"The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has
no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening
the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and
law enforcement officials said yesterday," reports the New York Times.
The Times' sources, and perhaps the paper itself, seem to be engaging in some wishful thinking. Prosecutors, whether special or ordinary, hardly ever release reports, whether they indict anyone or not, and as the Times notes, "Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report." The confusion here arises because the independent counsel statute did require the issuance of reports.
Meanwhile, check out this hard-hitting editorial on the Plame kerfuffle:
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's CIA-leak inquiry is focusing attention on what long has been a tactic of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration: slash-and-burn assaults on its critics, particularly those opposed to the president's Iraq war policies.
If top officials are indicted, it could seriously erode the administration's credibility and prove yet another embarrassment to Bush on the larger issue of how he and his national security team marshaled information--much of it later shown to be inaccurate--to support their case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Oh wait, that isn't an editorial; it's an Associated Press "news" story. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Weasel
Watch
Saddam Hussein's first trial for crimes against humanity got under way in Iraq
today, though it quickly adjourned until next month. The German wire service
DPA reports some Europeans are unhappy:
A United Nations judge has criticized the trial of former dictator Saddam Hussein by an Iraqi special court, saying Monday it would have been better to task an international court with the case.
Wolfgang Schomburg, a German who sits on U.N. tribunals trying war crimes in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said the Iraqi court, advised as it was by U.S. lawyers, had some features of "victors' justice."
In an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Schomburg said the world could have set up a special court for Saddam.
"Since the United States does not cooperate with the permanent court of international criminal justice in The Hague, a tribunal supported by the international community as a whole would have had to be set up, as happened with Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone."
Reuters, meanwhile, brings us a report on the Yugoslavia tribunal:
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic may take another 4 to 5 years if the former Yugoslav president accused of genocide gets his way, the prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal said on Tuesday.
Milosevic wants to call almost 200 witnesses for his defence case, prosecutor Geoffrey Nice said. They include former U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. . . .
The trial, that began in February 2002, has been repeatedly delayed due to his heart condition and high blood pressure.
Prosecutors have tried to speed up proceedings by asking the court to consider working four or five days a week instead of three. The request was rejected due to Milosevic's health. . . .
The court is supposed to complete all cases, including appeals, by the end of 2010.
If the Iraqis followed Wolfgang Schomburg's advice, Saddam Hussein would probably die of old age before he could be executed for his crimes.
The
Mass Murderer Formerly Known as Saddam
From the Associated Press, a scene from an Iraqi courtroom:
[Presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed] Amin, a Kurd, tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself but Saddam refused and finally sat. . . .
The other defendants include Saddam's former intelligence chief Barazan Ibrahim, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and other lower-level Baathist civil servants. . . .
Ramadan also refused to identify himself to the judge.
"I repeat what President Saddam Hussein has said," he added.
At which point, we imagine, Saddam shouted, "You idiot! Now they know my name!"
Oh,
the Humanity!
"Egypt has started to build a security fence around the Red Sea resort
of Sharm el-Sheikh to try to stop attacks on the town, security officials say,"
reports the BBC:
The officials said the fence would stretch for 20km (12 miles) and force vehicles wanting to enter the town to pass through one of four checkpoints.
Can we expect to hear wails of outrage about the indignities suffered by Arabs who are subject to checkpoints? Or does that only apply when it is Jews who are seeking to protect themselves from terror?
Tinfoil
Hat Watch
Here is Robert D. Ivey of Gainesville, Fla., in a letter to the editor of the
Gainesville Sun:
America may ultimately suffer the same fate as Nazi Germany in World War II. The European Union will not stand back forever and allow the CIA-Pentagon to hold 11,000 hostages, without charge and for life, submitting some to torture. It will finally realize that America's plan to take over the Middle East is a threat to their own countries, too.
A member of the United Nations team in Iraq has reported that the civilians in whole cities are cut off from food and water before US soldiers pillage them. Both parties in Congress intend to occupy Iraq indefinitely. President Bush's takeover of Iraq was the worst crime of the 21st century.
In Gainesville, the new Supervisor of Elections has made certain that citizens of Gainesville will never know what actual votes were cast in future elections by installing the defective Diebold machines that are now being spread throughout the country. The Gainesville Sun conceals the acts of terror that have been committed by the CIA-Pentagon, not only in Iraq but other parts of the world. Read "NATO's Secret Armies" (2004), a fact-filled book about the history of the CIA violence committed in Europe since 1947.
Does anyone remember freedom of the press? It is the silence of American newspapers that is the most frightening thing of all.
For our part, we'd be unnerved if newspapers started talking to us.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"Guest Columnist: Adopt the Homeless, and Spay or Neuter Them"--headline, Fort Pierce (Fla.) Tribune, Oct. 18, 2005
What
Would Most Do Without Polls?
"Most think politicians represent own interests, poll says"--subheadline,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 17
Wouldn't
STRINGENT Plans Be Better?
"LAX Plans for Bird Flu Quarantines"--headline, Los Angeles Times,
Oct. 18
Bottom
Story of the Day
"Indiana Jail Running Out of Toilet Paper"--headline, Associated Press,
Oct. 18
Joke
and Dagger Dept.
A New York Sun editorial remarks on the gift for metaphor of New York's other
senator, Chuck "The Knife" Schumer:
No sooner had [former] Senators [Connie] Mack and [John] Breaux unleashed their ideas on making the federal tax code more simple and fair than Senator Schumer unsheathed his rusty old dagger, describing the idea of eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes as "a dagger to the heart of the people of New York." Voters might be inclined to listen--except for the fact that Mr. Schumer sees a dagger virtually everywhere he looks.
A 2003 plan for flexible work schedules instead of overtime? "A dagger to the heart of the middle class," Mr. Schumer said, according to the Associated Press. A 2002 plan by federal regulators to urge Wall Street firms to establish backup facilities outside New York City? A "dagger pointed at the heart of New York," Mr. Schumer said, according to the Daily News. High gas prices? "A dagger at the heart of our economy," Mr. Schumer said in 2000, according to the New York Times. A unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood would be "a dagger through the heart of the peace process," Mr. Schumer said in 2000, according to the Agence France Presse.
Hate crimes "put a dagger in the heart of what America is all about," Mr. Schumer said in 1999, according to USA Today. A proposal to change the federal transportation funding formula was "a dagger pointed at" New York and California, Mr. Schumer said in 1999, according to the Washington Post. School vouchers? "Daggers that plunge into the heart of what is the American way," Mr. Schumer said in May 1999, according to the New York Post. Cuts in federal student aid? "A dagger to New York's college students," Mr. Schumer told Newsday in 1995.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mr. Schumer sees daggers more often than a four-eyed knife thrower looking through a kaleidoscope.
We're trying to imagine Schumer's reaction to the latest revelation of Harriet Miers's abortion views: Miss Miers, I worry that your extreme antichoice position is the tip of an iceberg, an iceberg that is a dagger pointed at the heart of the mainstream. The sheer entertainment of watching Schumer go on like this is almost enough to make us hope the Miers nomination lasts long enough to make it to the Judiciary Committee.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Paul Weiser, Ruth Papazian, Brian Grayson, Neal Lang, Brian Rosen, Mark Kolmar, David Walton, Ed Lasky, Darryl May, Ron Ackert, John Barnes, Michael Segal, Fred Furia, Jeff Meling, Alan Sayre, Jim Orheim, Donald McCormick and Jeff Tucker. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Robert Bork: The Miers nomination shows Bush to be indifferent, if not hostile, to conservative values.
- Claudia Rosett: A lawsuit alleges Oil for Food-like corruption in the Congo Republic.
- Alan Pell Crawford: The Founding Fathers didn't solve the slavery problem. Could they have done better?
